MODERN GOTHIC

New Zealand Listener, Volume 24, Issue 621, 25 May 1951, Page 12

MODERN GOTHIC

GORMENGHAST and THE GLASSBLOWERS, by Mervyn Peake; Eyre and Spottiswoode; English prices, 15/- and 7/6 respectively. INCE Titus Groan appeared in 1946 » there has been a cult of Mervyn Peake among many of the intelligentsia. This first novel puzzled nearly everyone who read it, although its verbal gusto and grotesque comedy were highly entertaining. Gormenghast completes the original story with the fall of the House of Groan. Titus, the 77th Earl, grows up and tries to see what lies beyond the castle walls of his decaying kingdom. He is frustrated by Steerpike’s attempt to seize power, and the book ends with a great storm during which Titus and Steerpike chase each other through endless corridors and over acres of roofs, while the surrounding river bursts its banks. The book is often outrageously funny (for instance, in the scene where the Professor woos Irma Prunesqualor), although the tortured style sometimes conceals rather than reveals the author’s wit and gothic fancy. The charactersSwelter, Flay and Barquentine, Fuchsia and the twins Cora and Clarice-are all distortions of humanity, and the allegory of the book, if there is one, is heavily veiled. , Mervyn Peake’s poems, The Glassblowers, are a different matter, that is to say, they are compact, metaphysical rather than romantic, and generally traditional in form. The title poem is a bold and sensitive piece of. pictorial, imagination, and I particularly liked also "Truths Have No Separate Fires."

P.J.

W.